The birth of your brand starts here. This is your first crunch-point, a milestone in your business’s history and an altogether key stage in how you act and market yourself from this point.

Assess your Targets
When it comes to the first stage in a brand’s development, many people seem to believe it’s the design of the logo itself but this isn’t all together true; and we’ve seen people waste money on having logos developed way before they’ve even thought about their expectations or their requirements.

As with any marketing activity you’ll do, you should be thinking about your targets foremost. Make yourself a coffee, tea or cocktail and sit with your management personnel (or just yourself if you’re a one-person-business), ensuring you take a pen and some paper with you. The likelihood is that by this point you would have developed a Business Plan, so bring that along too.

Now it’s time to set your targets for your brand. Ask yourself these basic questions:

1. How do you want people to perceive your business?
2. What are your competitors brands like? What are they’re strengths/weaknesses?
3. Take a close look at your industry-leaders’ brands, what do they have in common? A minimal style with soft colours? Strong colours and heavy illustrations with bold lines?
4. What market league do you want to be in? Do you aim to deal with the Micro’s and the SME’s, or do you want to be swimming with the big fish?
5. What colours would suit you and your business, and what symbols or icons?

By answering these questions, you should be starting to deduce exactly what it is you’re looking to achieve in business, and that reflects directly back your brand. You see, your brand isn’t just about a modern piece of artwork on your t-shirts, it’s about how people perceive your business and your visibility in marketing activities; and it goes without saying that this directly impacts your Cashflow. Think about that for a moment. Okay ready? We’ll move on.



Creating a Tender
Okay it’s time to move forward and put out a tender for design/marketing firms to propose their ideas about designing your brand.

Keep your tender to the point, and don’t offer any sensitive information or development plans just yet. You’ll need to write about an A4 page of information detailing what the design company will need to undertake; use these headings as a guide:
Project Overview
About Us
Aims & Objectives
Our Expectations
Timescales
Budget

These are all self-explanatory, so just remember to stick to the point, don’t babble on and make sure you clearly communicate your aims. Oh and a little trick, always undercut your budget. You should be expecting to pay around £250.00 for a company to undertake your project (and that should include all the advice they give you and about 3 different concepts with 2 stages of revisions to the final design – more about this later), so if you’re budget is £250.00, put it in the tender as £200.00. Remember, it’s always better to look like you’re giving them more money than you expected, it’ll keep them happy.


Involving the Professionals
This is the part where we become unpopular with a majority of designers; of all the hordes of web design firms across the globe, most of them are now offering logo design. So although it’s tempting to just have your brand done by the same people doing your website, etcetera etcetera, it’s not always the best idea. It’s a fair assumption to make that most of these newly found logo design services are just that; Logo Design.

You and your brand are really precious things, so don’t put them in the hands of just anyone with a computer and a bit of software. Choosing the right design or marketing firm to take on your brand design is a vital part of the whole process; you’ll need to find someone who’s a professional, works to certain standards, meets certain expectations and most of all, has the proof to back-up what they’re offering to you.


Vital points to look out for when enlisting a company for your branding project:

• They’ve been around at least a couple of years and have enough work to prove it. Check out their portfolio, don’t be afraid to do some digging and get in touch with their clients. Remember – professionals won’t mind you doing this, in fact they’ll encourage it.
• Everything they’re discussing is in Plain-English, and if it’s not, they can explain it effectively when you query it.
• If they really care about your success, they’ll challenge almost all of your ideas just to be 100% about everything. Crucial parts of your logo, such as colours, play an important part in forming your company’s profile; the firm should be examining this and comparing it with your targets and expectations.

All in all, you’ll need to find someone you can build a good working relationship with, can place your trust in and of course, will deliver on-time and on-budget.

Creative businesses can be a strange bunch at times, but the usual rules apply – if you don’t trust someone to deliver on the job, then don’t trust them with your project or your money.


The Design Process
So you’ve chosen your design/marketing firm for your branding project, probably paid a deposit and given them a formal tender. If they’re really good, they would’ve came to see you and gone through everything, it’s a fantastic extra, but not vital.

Typically you should expect to work through the following stages with them:

1. You accept the project formerly (make sure you’re bound with them legally, i.e. signed Terms of Business / Project Go-Ahead).
2. After a few days, you should be receiving your initial concepts. They should be different, and well-thought out. If they all look the same, demand alternates be done. You’re paying after all.
3. Providing both parties are reasonable, and your designer full understands your objectives, you should never get to a stage where you cannot agree on a design. So, with that in mind, pick the design that grabs your attention or speak with the designer and get another concept.
4. Sit down with the pen and paper again (did we mention the cocktail? Sorry, the coffee) and your favourite logo design. Decipher its strengths and its weaknesses, take a step back and take a fresh, clean, unbiased view. Show friends and family, get their honest opinions (explicitly ask for HONEST opinions, please can be too nice most of the time). Look at the symbols used, its workability in your stationery and marketing activities – how viable is it for clothing, vehicles, signage? Make a list of revisions based on your findings and tie them up with your objectives.
5. Submit the revisions to your designer.
6. Within a day or two, you should receive the revised logo. Do exactly the same as what you did in point 4, sit down and pull it apart. Get peoples opinions. If you’re happy, declare the project closure to the designer, or submit another set of revisions.

Ensure you only submit two or three sets of revisions, don’t ask the designer to change things in dribs and drabs. It’s better all round on everyone’s time and patience.

Remember - don’t get lost in the creativity and pleasures of the eye, your brand still needs to deliver on it’s, or rather, YOUR targets and promises. The firm you’ve chosen to undertake your project should be thinking about this throughout.


Sign-Off
Now that you have an agreed design, you’ll need to sign-off the project with your designer (which usually involves your signature and a Project Closure Statement).

Make sure they deliver your logo in both professional formats for further professional work (just get them to agree by email that they’re industry standard formats) and a usable format for your own day-to-day documentation (usually high resolution JPEG).


That’s it, Stage One over. Trusting all went well, you’ve now built up a good relationship with a professional design/marketing business and most importantly, had your logo designed in accordance with your aims, objectives and expectations. Want a professional opinion? Throw us your logo and an email through www.redtigerdesign.com – we’d be happy to have a chat with you.

The next stage is ‘Impact’ – where you use your brand across your business and marketing activities.


Thanks for reading!